Etichete

vineri, 21 august 2015

The Egalitarian Ideal

Shaun Downey, 'Boy Amongst the Birches'

Our first image of society is not
egalitarian. Firstly, we see the people standing upright around us. They are
taller than us, so that they seem to us as mastering the troubles of the world by
being above them. The world looks to us cloudy and mainly indifferent, full of
unknown people and things, many of them apparently without any sense.

Those people are familiar to us,
often being our own parents and relatives, or educators who are perceived as
existing for our help.

For this reason, the upright
posture from which we can master the troubles of the world seems also familiar
and reachable in the future.

Afterwards, we understand that to
stand between other people and things did not mean to be above them. On the
contrary, the standing position reveals itself as a way to stay firmly under
other unreachable people and things or to attempt eagerly to be above them.

Meanwhile, the world cannot get
more sense to us; it keeps to appear cloudy, sometimes dark and threatening.
Moreover, it seems to provide all those troublesome people and things which
do not let us to rise.

The egalitarian ideal comes
especially as a need to give a sense to that cloudy world, and not as a
personal benefit, since we deeply want to be upright by ourselves, not equal to
other persons.

The impossibility of building an egalitarian
society cannot be excused by the fact that many of us really succeed in
standing upright. An inegalitarian society keeps the world cloudy or without a
clear sense.It remains a nonsense that
some of us are up and other down or a matter of pure chance, far from that
first image of the easy way to that future age when we will overcome the
troubles of the world.